In vitro diagnostics (IVD) allows labs to assist in the diagnosis of disease based on assays performed on patient fluid samples. IVD includes various types of analytical tests and assays related to patient diagnosis and therapy that can be performed by analysis of a liquid sample taken from a patient's bodily fluids, or abscesses. These assays are typically conducted with automated clinical chemistry analyzers (analyzers) onto which fluid containers, such as tubes or vials containing patient samples have been loaded. The analyzer extracts a liquid sample from the vial and combines the sample with various reagents in special reaction cuvettes or tubes (referred to generally as reaction vessels). In some conventional systems, a modular approach is used for analyzers. A lab automation system can shuttle samples between one sample processing module (module) and another module. Modules may include one or more stations, including sample handling stations and testing stations (e.g., a unit that can specialize in certain types of assays or can otherwise provide testing services to the larger analyzer), which may include immunoassay (IA) and clinical chemistry (CC) stations. Some traditional IVD automation track systems comprise systems that are designed to transport samples from one fully independent module to another standalone module. In a typical workflow in a diagnostic laboratory, multiple diagnostic tests are ordered for individual samples. For example, a doctor may order a plurality of immunoassays on a patient sample to search for different antibodies. While the doctor's goal in ordering the tests is to make a diagnosis based on a desired set of facts, the tests may not be an optimal combination for utilizing an analyzer efficiently. For example, tests may be incompatible when run in succession. Tests may be incompatible in two ways. First, tests may use reagents that react poorly with reagents of another test. The chemical incompatibility of these two tests may require additional wash cycles for any pipettes that may be shared between the tests. For example, a single reagent pipette may be used amongst a plurality of reagents. If multiple tests utilize that same reagent pipette tip and that reagent pipette is required to dispense chemically incompatible reagents in succession, the reagent pipette may have to waste a cycle doing an additional wash step to avoid contaminating the next test or the next reagent reservoir.
Another way that tests may be incompatible is that two tests may utilize incompatible resource allocation profiles. To operate with maximum efficiency, tests should begin each operation cycle of an analyzer module during steady-state operation of the analyzer. Where there is no competition for resources (such as pipettes, incubators, or detection instruments, such as luminescence detectors), it may be possible to schedule tests to begin each cycle. However, if tests utilize resources in different sequences or require exclusive use of resources for different periods of time, starting two tests in succession may create a competition between those two tests for the same resources during a later cycle.
In some instances, the chemistry of each test is calibrated with the assumption that each test will be completed within a certain amount of time after starting a test. For example, a test may be calibrated using a two-minute window between the addition of reagents and the observation of the reaction. A delay of three minutes between the reagent addition and the detection of results may affect the accuracy of the test. Accordingly, the start of tests may need to be delayed until all steps in the task can be scheduled without uncertain delays. This can result in skipped machine cycles where no tests begin. This can reduce the overall throughput of an analyzer and can increase the turnaround time of a batch of samples.